Table Manners....

[mjkacmom]

Someone please answer this question. I must know.

Who the heck eats crackers at the dining table? If I spread something on a cracker at a party, I take a few bites, and then it's gone. I don't think I've ever put a 1/2 cracker down anywhere.

 

[JiggleStoof]

Someone please answer this question. I must know.

Proper etiquette states that crackers are never eaten; they are merely ceremonial accoutrements to be admired but never eaten. In formal settings, including all parties during the Palm Beach season, one is obliged to affix a cracker to the middle of one's personal forehead. During the party, one must only acknowledge the fixity of the cracker with a curt nod. After the party, one must take care to send written fulsome notes of compliment to each cracker-wearer, expressing in gushing terms the rare taste and elegance of his or her cracker fixity.

 

[joviroxx]

Who the heck eats crackers at the dining table? If I spread something on a cracker at a party, I take a few bites, and then it's gone. I don't think I've ever put a 1/2 cracker down anywhere.

To be fair, we Cubans do. We have this big Cuban crackers that can accompany a meal. Some people butter them, I don't. BUT, they are broken up and eaten in pieces.

 

[aimyourarrowshigh]

Heavens to murgatroyd, this thread has gotten bizarre.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that, as the above poster stated, it was at least partially tongue-in-cheek. But it also had a point: manners are about making sure people are comfortable in all sorts of situations, whether they are being able to easily navigate tricky street food while walking around a city or being seated next to someone who grew up reading Emily Post.

It's not about pretzel mustard being applied correctly as in 'with proper etiquette', it's about pretzel mustard being applied correctly as in 'with the least amount of mustard squirted all over you while you walk.' Showing your kids how to do this isn't peculiar or controlling--it's a useful thing to know.

As for 'necessary life skills,' that's obviously an overstatement for comedic effect. (But it's also a nod to how often you eat street food in a big city, and how embarrassing it can be to walk around all day with a giant mustard stain on your front. I've done it. Mustard leaves a weird stain.)

Certainly no one is smirking at death at a state fair. As a lifelong lover of state fairs (albeit ones on the east coast), the accident in Indiana didn't cross my mind for a second with that comment. Instead, it's that pretzels and chestnuts are common street food in NYC, but that the poster might not know the best way to avoid being covered in powdered sugar from funnel cake (hint: try not to eat down wind of your food).

For the bread and butter, surely there's a difference between knowing the correct etiquette for bread and butter and thinking those buttering an entire roll are the worst things ever at the dinner table. There's nothing wrong with knowing the former, and there's a serious reverse snobbery about thinking there is. (Don't get me started on an asparagus fork.) However, it's clearly also not the worst thing you can do at the dinner table, as evidenced by some of the hair-raising examples given here.

That said, of course it's reasonable that it's someone's pet peeve. Pet peeves are, by nature, not totally rational. A pet peeve is something that bothers you far more than the situation actually warrants. A pet peeve of mine: when someone pays by check or takes beer through the grocery self-checkout lane (things that both require personal attention rather than simply machine approval). Are the people who do this actually the worst people ever in the world? No. Do I sometimes want to yell at them, 'I cannot believe you would do this. You are the worst!' Of course. Because it is a pet peeve. And it makes me feel irrational.

Yes, some of the pro-small-bread-bits people have been rather snooty and rigid about things. But no, I don't think it's unreasonable to have bread be your pet peeve, because pet peeves aren't reasonable by nature.

Finally (because this is getting long), you do your kids a disservice if you don't teach them proper etiquette, no matter how silly you think it is, because you never know when it will come in handy. However, you also do your kids a disservice if you teach them to look down on those who don't know the details of etiquette. Because, surely, being gracious, warm, and welcoming of your guests is the best manners there is.

I agree.

 

[leebee]

I haven't seen a single person in the "butter a bite/cut a bite" camp indicate they would EVER criticize an individual unaware of or violating either rule - either to the individual's face or behind their back.

Posters not aware of dining etiquette, on the other hand, appear quick to jump down the throats of the above group. Those are less like opinions and more like attacks. This thread is about table manners, right? It seems disingenuous to attack people because someone doesn't agree or isn't familiar with violations of good manners that offend someone else.

After reading all 15 pages of this thread at one time (hey, it's a slow morning here on the upper East Coast, what with folks not wanting to come visit because of OUR manners ), this is pretty much my observation, also.

I was taught the bread thing, and taught it to my daughter, too. Does that mean we don't eat bread however we want to here at home? NO. However, it does mean that if we are out someplace fancy, or dining with people we respect or want to have them think well of us (you know... royalty, older folks, prospective employers, etc.), or residents of NYC (jk, I LOVE NYC and agree with much of what cornflake has said), we pull out the etiquette rules and use our proper manners... because it matters to us. If it doesn't matter to you, fine. I am willing to bet that people will be as mentally judgmental of me when I break my bread into pieces to butter individually as I will be of them when they shove half a buttered roll into their mouths.

For the record, we break/butter/eat, cut sandwiches and burgers into halves (sometimes quarters, depending on how much stuff is on them), eat thin-crusted pizza folded or with a knife/fork, cut our meat one bite at a time and transfer the fork to the right hand for eating that bite, and cut chicken or other meat off the bone to eat (although gnawing on bones will happen in the kitchen, or if one is dining very casually or having RIBS!). If we REALLY need to sop up the delicious goodness left from gravy or sauce with a roll- often my favorite part of a meal- we use a fork to mop with and eat the roll bite. Very few foods lend themselves to being totally finger-foods in our family: chicken wings, spring rolls, sandwiches/burgers after cutting, french fries all come to mind.

My biggest peeve? People who take butter using their personal dinner knife, or who use the butter knife to spread the butter on their own bread (OK, this could be 2 peeves in one as I guess it presumes that the bread isn't broken before buttering ). This extends to using your own fork to spear a piece of meat, also. To my way of thinking, there are serving utensils and personal dining utensils, and it gets under my skin when folks use their eating utensils to serve themselves food from the communal serving dishes.

 

[SpecialK]

Because...? You think only residents of the upper east coast know proper dining etiquette and discuss it online?

Interesting.

I would have to agree that that's a pretty narrow view. The person in my family who had the strictest view of table manners was my grandfather who was raised on a farm in rural Sweden.

I eat pizza with a knife and fork. I tear my dinner roll before a butter an individual piece. I am a stickler for eating in a way that won't offend or gross out my fellow diners. I don't give a rip how anyone else does it except the children for whom I am responsible.

 

[Bob NC]

My biggest dining pet peeve?

My asking that a plate be passed to me is not an invitation for everyone else to help themselves first.

Lol, I don't know why, but it just drives me crazy when I ask for someone to pass the roast beef and they pick it up and start digging through it to serve themselves first.

 

[robinb]

Does anyone really eat pizza with a fork????????

Oh yes! Chicago deep dish or stuffed pizza is too gooey to eat with your hands and you need to use a knife and fork. I do admit that once I get far enough I pick up the crust and eat it with my hands. I have a feeling that many people here would be peeved by that along with some of my other dining fox paws .

 

[stargazer2892]

My biggest pet peeve is freaking cell phones at the table. Do not answer your phone in the middle of placing a food order, have a conversation that the person and expect the server to still be standing there 10 minutes later waiting for you to finish ordering. Also how hard is it to not answer a call or text for 45 minutes. I understand there are jobs that require on call time but talking about who won the UNC game to a buddy while you ignore your wife and kids at the dinner table seems just plain rude no matter how you where brought up.

 

[Bob NC]

Oh, and.....

If I am with a group and I am the only one eating bread or rolls, I will put some butter on the side of my plate and break my bread off into a bite sized piece before buttering and eating.

However, if many are eating bread and I notice nobody else doing this, I won't either. I'll just butter the roll and set it on the side of my plate.

99.9 times out of 100, most folks butter the entire piece of bread first.

 

[Planogirl]

Like I said earlier, I'm aware of the bread rule. I just think that it's silly.

But then nothing is better than a roll that has had butter melted into it. That is impossible if you follow the rule.

 

[goofy!]

Did you think that was necessary? Money and manners have nothing to do with each other. I think it's a shame that you don't care if your child's lack of manners costs them a job or a client down the road, or the embarrassment of not knowing which fork to use if they are invited to a formal dinner at some time.

I'm really surprised by the reverse classicism here. Good manners and proper etiquette automatically mean someone is pretentious? Since when? I know some posters here have been pretty rude, but not everyone is like that. I do think that not using good manners says something about the person, but it has nothing to do with class or money. For a child, it just means they were never taught, which doesn't reflect on the child. For an adult, it means that they never took the time to bother to learn, and I do think that indicates a lack of respect for others. Etiquette exists to establish expected behaviors that everyone can follow and fell comfortable in knowing what to do (like which fork to use for which course, etc.). Learning etiquette isn't hard - there are books at the library and web pages with the basic rules.

This is where I am at.

I could care less what people do when we are eating out with them. Ok, it is a pet peeve when forks are used as stabbing instruments, but I would never end a friendship over it or think less of the person.

But, as indicated by this thread, there are plenty of people that associate the lack of manners with being uneducated, infantile, etc.

I am old enough to remember companies who, as part of the interview process, would take you out to lunch. If you salted your food before you tasted it, you would not get the job. It was figured that you made rash decisions without testing the information (or tasting the food at lunch) and therefore would not hire the person.

To quote Queen Whatshername in Princess Diaries; "Manners Matter."

I would hate for my kids to lose out on a job because the interviewer thinks them uneducated due to lack of proper manners or if entertaining a potential major client, loses the account because the client thought that if the account manager cannot even pay attention to the minute detail of manners, how could they possibly manage the minute details of their account.

It happens, and it is not rare, in the real world.

We can be casual at home and butter our whole biscuits or eat our chicken with our hands, but my kids will at least know what the proper manners are so that if in a situation with clients or an executive job interview, they at least know the proper protocol.

 

[kimmar067]

Because...? You think only residents of the upper east coast know proper dining etiquette and discuss it online? .....

"...uptown girl, she's been livin' in her uptown world..."

 

[Feralpeg]

I really don't care about the table manners of people at other tables in a restaurant as long as they don't directly impose on my table. I would rather not listen to bodily noises nor detect bodily gases from anyone. Other than that, most stuff doesn't bother me.

The only real pet peeve I have about eating out is when people let their children peek over the booth and stare at me and my companions. I realize that children are impulsive and might think this to be fun, but it shouldn't last more than a minute. When the parent sees what the child is doing, they should make the child turn around and sit down. So many times, I've seen parents ignore this behavior or, oddly, encourage it.

 

[lsyorke]

you cut pizza, etc.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-1-2011/me-lover-s-pizza-with-crazy-broad

Sorry...couldn't resist, LOL!

 

[kimmar067]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-1-2011/me-lover-s-pizza-with-crazy-broad

Sorry...couldn't resist, LOL!

...OMG!!! I'm DYIN' ova HEE-ya!!! I can't stop cryin', this is so bleepin' funny!!

 

[calypso726]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-1-2011/me-lover-s-pizza-with-crazy-broad

Sorry...couldn't resist, LOL!

That was HILARIOUS!!!!

Much of what falls into the category of proper etiquette with regards to table manners beyond the basic things most folks learn as kids (not chewing with your mouth open, bodily noises, using toothpicks at the table etc.) I've either learned from reading books or watching movies whereby the characters were well schooled in etiquette

Reading this thread had made me acutely aware of how much more there is that I don't know Had no clue about the bread thing really Normally, I generally don't give a rip about what anyone thinks. If I were to commit a minor faux pas and if the person no longer wishes to associate with me on that account, their loss, my gain. That said, I appreciate any opportunity to learn the right way to do something when it presents itself.

I serioulsy do not get the hostility towards people here who WERE taught the rules of proper etiquette and table manners coming from those who weren't. I'm actually glad some of them chose to share what they were taught. I learned something new today Now, am I going to tear, butter, eat, repeat my roll at home? Nope. Next time I go to Victoria & Alberts or Remy though, yes.

Inspired by this thread, I am actually ordering Etiquette for Dummies

 

[Elmo9607]

Chewing with mouth open, holding your silverware improperly, smacking, or being on your cell phone at the table are my big ones. My bf is sometimes bad with being on his phone...usually when we're out. I've managed to curb his habit a bit by asking him point blank if there's somewhere else he'd rather be or someone else he'd rather be talking to. He puts it away after that

 

[ilovemk76]

I really don't care about the table manners of people at other tables in a restaurant as long as they don't directly impose on my table. I would rather not listen to bodily noises nor detect bodily gases from anyone. Other than that, most stuff doesn't bother me.

The only real pet peeve I have about eating out is when people let their children peek over the booth and stare at me and my companions. I realize that children are impulsive and might think this to be fun, but it shouldn't last more than a minute. When the parent sees what the child is doing, they should make the child turn around and sit down. So many times, I've seen parents ignore this behavior or, oddly, encourage it.

Maybe they are from the family where the mother does not want the kids looking at her while she eats. Staring at strangers is OK with her.

 

[Coconut36]

I really don't care about the table manners of people at other tables in a restaurant as long as they don't directly impose on my table. I would rather not listen to bodily noises nor detect bodily gases from anyone. Other than that, most stuff doesn't bother me.

The only real pet peeve I have about eating out is when people let their children peek over the booth and stare at me and my companions. I realize that children are impulsive and might think this to be fun, but it shouldn't last more than a minute. When the parent sees what the child is doing, they should make the child turn around and sit down. So many times, I've seen parents ignore this behavior or, oddly, encourage it.

My kids have done this..I absolutely stopped them immediately (so you might get peeped that one time) and if they try to do it again I walk them outside for a time out before we return. It's not like it's hard to tell if they are preparing to turn around and once they do it once you can't be prepared to stop them from doing it again.

I have however seen people encouraging it as well. Like I want their kid staring at me while I eat. I think they think their kid is so wonderful and adorable you must want to see them/interact with them while you eat Honestly it baffles me beyond words when that has happened before. My own kids have looked at me in horror like "why are they doing that" when they actually encourage them (say "hi to the people" as well).